


Where your treasure is.

by orange_crushed



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Christmas Fluff, Foot Massage, Future Fic, Holidays, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 04:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1089618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He blinks the sleep away from his eyes and looks down and finds Castiel kneeling on the floor, holding Dean’s naked foot in both hands, his palm cupped under the heel. He’s still wearing the dorky snowflake sweater Dean bought him as a joke, but now there’s a towel tied around his waist, too; one of the bath sheets from the shower room. Behind him, the television plays an infomercial for holiday bakeware.</p><p>“Bwuh?” Dean says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where your treasure is.

Dean dreams he’s dying, dying in the Mall of America while a dozen people dressed as elves laugh in his face and he’s slowly smothered by that fake snow they pile around the Santa’s Village. He dreams he’s dying and he wakes up still kinda buzzed and warm and flushed, all except for his feet, while are suddenly freezing. Dean feels his right foot being picked up, touched on the bare sole by the fingers of someone’s hand. He blinks the sleep away from his eyes and looks down and finds Castiel kneeling on the floor, holding Dean’s naked foot in both hands, his palm cupped under the heel. He’s still wearing the dorky snowflake sweater Dean bought him as a joke, but now there’s a towel tied around his waist, too; one of the bath sheets from the shower room. Behind him, the television plays an infomercial for holiday bakeware.

“Bwuh?” Dean says. He tries to collect his thoughts and fumbles them at first, drops a few, like gathering a bag of spilled apples. “Um,” he says. “Cas?” Castiel looks up at him and smiles, curling his hand around Dean’s ankle. Dean wonders which one of them has lost their mind. It’s probably him. He’s had sweaty, improbable dreams that started like this.

“I didn’t get you anything,” Castiel says.

“You- what?”

“I didn’t get you anything,” Castiel repeats. He looks at Dean patiently, like he’ll catch up in a minute if Castiel gives him enough rope. “For Christmas,” he says, at last.

“Oh,” says Dean, blankly. “It’s- that’s okay. It’s not important, you, uh,” he says, and Castiel rubs his thumb along the muscle on the inside of Dean’s arch. It feels fucking amazing, fantastic. Also, very very weird. “Cas,” Dean says, gritting his teeth. “What are you doing?”

“May I?” Castiel says, instead of answering. He presses his thumb a little deeper into the muscle, runs it back and forth, loosening a knot Dean didn’t even know he had. Dean stares at him and then glances to the hallway, the door to the kitchen, back towards the door that leads to the library. Kevin went to bed hours ago and Sam is somewhere, probably topping up his brutally rummy eggnog, or else he’s face-down in his own room by now. Dean hopes it’s that second thing. Because Castiel is still looking up at him expectantly, like Dean is going to be doing him a huge favor by saying _yes_ , go ahead and rub my ugly hairy man feet. Dean feels light-headed. It’s partly the booze. And partly, um, whatever the fuck this is.

“Uh,” Dean says. And then, because maybe he’s still dreaming: “Sure.” Castiel beams at him and then both of his hands go around the center of Dean’s foot, circling the bones that span the top and broaden into the toes, and they dig firmly into the meat of the underside and Dean makes what is maybe the most undignified noise of his life. Castiel freezes.

“Did I hurt you?” he says.

“No,” Dean says. Christ, he’s probably turning pink. “That was, uh, that was fine.” Castiel stares at him a second longer and then smiles, quietly pleased at some private joke, the same cherubic face he makes when he finds a birds’ nest or discovers a new way to cheat savagely at cards.

“Ah,” he says, and leaves it at that. He kneads Dean’s foot again, slower and deeper, rubbing into the tendons at the back of his ankle, smoothing downward into the ball of his foot, stroking the topside with his knuckles in soft patterns. Dean watches him concentrate on the motions, methodical and focused like he is with everything that really matters. Castiel burns toast and leaves the shower running if he thinks of something important while he’s washing his hair, but Dean has watched him plan their latest hunts with the intensity of an especially deranged Mathlete. He patched up a hole in Sam’s shoulder two weeks ago without noticing that the same angry wendigo had sliced his own thigh open. Sometimes, he’s in his own little world. And now that little world is below Dean’s ankles, and it is kind of freaky how not freaky it feels. It feels humbling, and it feels amazing, because Castiel seems to know just how much pressure Dean can take, just where he likes somebody to dig in and where to ease up. Castiel hits a perfect point right in the middle of the sole and Dean lets his head sink backwards into the couch, lets his eyes fall halfway shut, and just exhales slow and happy and not really very drunk anymore. He can hear Castiel humming to himself a little, and over that the sound of the television hostess talking about cupcakes and casseroles and stay-warm tote bags. Castiel switches to Dean’s left foot, finds a stiff point in the ankle and soothes it with both hands rubbing up and down the tense muscles, like he’s slowly sanding away at the grain of the wood. Dean groans in the back of his throat without meaning to, again, but this time Castiel doesn’t stop.

After a while Castiel lets go of his foot and gives it an odd little pat, and Dean lies there and stares cowardly up at the ceiling for a minute, wondering what he’s going to say, putting off saying anything at all. Wondering what he’s going to do when he has to look at Castiel again, all warm and human kneeling on the floor in his silly- okay, adorable- sweater that Dean gave him, that he looked so absurdly grateful for. Maybe Dean can pretend like he just fell asleep. It might be less humiliating than trying to talk with- God, he thinks he might actually have tears in his eyes. He deserves exactly nothing for Christmas, and instead he gets this. He gets all of this: Sam and Kevin and Cas, he gets _Cas_. Dean is wallowing in those thoughts when Castiel picks up his foot again and sinks it into a bowl of warm water.

“What the- _frack_ ,” Dean says, pulling the actual obscenity out of his mouth at the last possible second. He sits up in shock and Castiel glances up at him, but doesn’t stop slowly massaging the skin under the water, rubbing in the crease between Dean’s toes. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Castiel says. His tone is calm and he’s gone back to looking at Dean’s feet, but there’s an edge of amusement there, like Dean is the one being obtuse and this is somehow fucking hilarious. He scrubs Dean’s foot with his hands and a washcloth, and then takes it out of the bowl again, rests Dean’s heel in his lap, on top of the towel. He dries Dean’s foot off, rubs between his toes and all around and up his ankle, then sets it back down on the floor and reaches for the other one.

“Cas,” Dean says. “Cas, stop.” Castiel stops, puts his palms on top of his thighs, like, _okay_ , hands off. And stares up at Dean. “Don’t,” Dean says. He can’t say anything else for a second. There’s something climbing his throat. “You don’t,” he tries, and fails, and tries again. “Not for me,” he says. “Please, don’t.” Castiel looks at him and then pushes the bowl to one side, dries his hands carefully on the towel at his waist, and gets up on his knees to inch closer to Dean, until he’s practically in Dean’s lap, his stomach against Dean’s legs. He puts his hands on top of Dean’s knees. Dean doesn’t know what to do with his own hands; they drop against the couch, palms up. He feels like something’s been peeled off of him: a top layer, a lid, a protective screen, and now he is just a pinned bug under a microscope, fidgeting, helpless and bare as his own stupid feet. He looks down at his lap, then past Castiel’s shoulder, anywhere, everywhere. Castiel’s fingers squeeze his kneecaps, and Dean comes back to earth a little. He looks into Castiel’s face. It’s so kind. It’s worn and human now- he scraped himself shaving two days ago, he bruised his face on a door when a ghost surprised them- but it’s such a good face, familiar and patient and only sometimes incandescently angry. Dean knows this face almost better than his own, now, after all this time. Knows when he is about to yell, about to smile, about to tell a horrible joke. Castiel is smiling now. Dean thinks he might finally know what to do with his own awkward, insecure hands. He lifts one up to put it against Castiel’s cheek, rubs his thumb along the bone there, the skull that’s just his now; the soft, sort of chapped skin. Castiel’s smile goes wider, but also gentler, raw somehow. Dean knows that expression. It’s the one he makes when he wanted something, but didn’t let himself expect it.

“I could give you everything,” Castiel says, “and it would still be less than you deserve.”

“That’s not-” Dean starts, and Castiel leans forward to press his mouth over Dean’s, and Dean has never been happier in his life to end a fucking sentence before it really began. Castiel kisses him deep, rocks him backwards a little with the force of it, and Dean wraps his fingers in Castiel’s hair, pulls him closer, slides him between his own legs until Castiel’s arms are around his waist. They kiss and kiss and then Castiel is leaning his face down against Dean’s chest and Dean is kissing the crown of his head tenderly, reverently, trying not to fall the fuck apart. “I don’t need anything from you,” he says, finally. His voice only cracks a little. He kisses Castiel’s hair again, rubs a hand down the back of his neck, around his shoulder. He’s so warm. “I just- need you. Have I said that before?”

“Yes,” Castiel says. His eyes are shut, he’s letting Dean pet slow circles at the top of his spine. His hands are curled into Dean’s shirt at the hips. “But you can say it as many times as you want.” Dean laughs and Castiel smiles into his belly, puts his ear against Dean’s heart.

They lie like that for a while.

“So,” Dean says, after a bit. He nudges Castiel with one knee. “You, uh. Gonna wash the other one?” Castiel leans up to look at him and Dean wiggles his eyebrows. “Don’t want to half-ass it,” he says, and Castiel rolls his eyes to the ceiling and pushes him sideways and then climbs the couch to wrestle Dean’s arms over his head and sit on him until he wheezes. Dean laughs so hard he can’t push him off, and then rolls them both over the side, narrowly missing the bowl, and then it stops being violent and starts being something absolutely fucking awesome. Dean has his hands all the way down Castiel’s sweatpants and is getting his collarbone fiercely sucked when there’s the sound of a glass hitting the floor from somewhere behind them. They look up to see Sam in the doorway in pajama bottoms and a ratty t-shirt, hair askew and eyes the size of saucers.

“I’ll just,” Sam says, “uh, away.”

Dean watches him wobble off in half-asleep silence and then looks down at Castiel, still on his back on the floor with his snowflake sweater pushed up to his armpits, his face glowing and mouth red. He’s insanely beautiful. This is a gift. It has to be: a door prize, a freebie from the universe for once, something nobody could merit on their own. Dean couldn’t have earned him with a billion box tops. Dean doesn’t know if reincarnation is real, but his last life must have been a fucking doozy.

“That’ll keep,” Dean says. “So. About my present.”

And Castiel pulls him back down.

 

 

.


End file.
